American popular culture has historically been an arena where hegemonic
structures and ideas could be challenged and where the status quo could be
questioned, often through humor and satire. Continuing this tradition in one of
the most refreshing recent contributions to American popular culture, Smoke
Signals, Sherman Alexie challenges hegemonic and stereotypical images of
American Indians through portraying a complex, humanizing, and contemporary
image of American Indians. In doing so, he addresses, in an interview with Cineaste,
what he avows is the "greatest challenge" to contemporary American
Indians--the issue of sovereignty (West and West 1998). Sovereignty generally
refers to autonomy and control over one's destiny. As such, it involves
representation and the power to create and determine how groups, and individuals
within those groups, are represented. Since popular culture is, by definition,
"popular" and widely consumed, it is a powerful agent in shaping
these representative images. However, the power of any one image of popular
culture is weakened in part because of the sheer magnitude of competing popular
elements. Images are further diluted because they are often casually consumed
as entertainment and because the contents of popular culture are so broad,
varied, and transitional. This essay emanates from my genuine appreciation for
the efforts of Alexie and my curiosity about the effects of popular culture and
the potential of Smoke Signals to counter hegemonic representations of
Indians. To explore this potential, I asked a series of questions of my students
in an introduction to sociology class and conducted an exploratory experiment
with a colleague's children. In the following, I discuss both the power of
popular culture to shape perceptions, through inciting novel ideas in a film
like Smoke Signals, and the transient effects of any one film. As such,
I point to the importance of this use and appropriation of popular culture and
also to the limitations of popular culture that necessitate actions on the part
of people who shape culture in general, directed toward elaborating and
institutionalizing the projects initiated by artists acting within the medium
of popular culture.
I asked the students in two sociology classes to list the stereotypes
that they or others hold concerning American Indians. The lists included a
dichotomous range of all-too-familiar American Indian stereotypes. The students
listed the negative stereotypes: "savage," "uneducated,"
"poor," "drunken," "angry," "aggressive,"
"stupid," "inferior," and "lazy," among others.
The more positive stereotypes included "proud," "noble,"
"spiritual," "deeply religious," "wise,"
"nature-loving," "tradition," and others. None of the
stereotypes gave any indication of perceptions of Indians as
"ordinary" Americans, although a few students argued in the
commentary that, despite these stereotypes, many Indians are
"ordinary" Americans. Clearly, Indians are understood by this
predominantly white and non-Indian student population as something
"other" than themselves--except, of course, those Indians whom they
know personally.
These stereotypes are reinforced by the images created by popular films
spanning classic westerns and contemporary films of the American West. The
images range from the warrior and the shamanic representation to the ignorant
drunken depiction. The warrior image includes the all-too-common savage
warrior, usually shown in stereotypical Plains form, and the heroic and noble
warrior/hunter, depicted as stoic, in touch with nature, and peace loving but
willing to fight when necessary. The shaman profile represents a deeply
religious and mysterious character. These images are most often contextualized
in some historic past with the major theme in the lives of the Indians being
the confrontation with encroaching peoples of European descent. The
warrior/hunter, the religious leader, and the confrontations with whites were
undoubtedly important aspects of much of the experience of American Indians
historically, and even the savage warrior image probably resonates to some
degree with actual experience within tribes as they perceived their
enemies--whether Indian or white. The image of drunkenness, too, has its
parallels in historical and contemporary Indian experience as Indians, as well
as a plethora of other Americans, struggle with alcohol problems. However, all
of these images are reductive. The portrayals, or perhaps the lack of
alternative portrayals, reduce the meta-image of American Indians in popular
culture to a finite and constrained set of experiences and potentials.
Alexie challenges, partially through humor and satire, these stereotypes
and images as he presents the lives of the main characters in Smoke Signals
situated within a contemporary context. The traditional warrior or shaman is
not found in the film, but the image of drunkenness plays a prominent role
because alcohol abuse is part of the subject matter and integral to the story
line. Alexie's protagonists are two young, fatherless
The film has many dimensions, and the characters of Victor and Thomas
and the images of American Indians they promote in the film cannot be reduced
to one interpretation. One of the contributions of Alexie's artistry in Smoke
Signals is his ability to portray complex characters who happen to be
American Indians. In their personae and their struggles, Alexie simultaneously
develops characters with both specific Indian qualities and more common
American aspects. In doing so, he promotes a more complete human image of
contemporary American Indians to a popular American audience. This significant
contribution is achieved through a rather simple formula: the major
protagonists portray contemporary American Indians in a specific world that is
at once American and Indian.
First and most obviously, the film is exclusively focused on Indian
characters embedded in an Indian cultural context. The protagonists in Smoke
Signals are associated with the specific cultural elements of the
contemporary
The humanizing efforts of the film and its appeal to a mainstream American
audience do not end with the illustration of contemporary American Indian life.
Along with being an informative, tragic, and humorous story, Smoke Signals
appeals to a mainstream audience because it addresses familiar human
conditions. In conjunction with the
Whatever the attraction, one of the potential effects of the film on a
mainstream audience involves its confrontation with the images the audience
previously held of American Indians. A novel image is set forth as the
characters become very human and very American without shedding their
distinction as members of a particular cultural group--remaining very Indian.
The audience comes to know the characters in cultural trappings that might, at
first glance, make them alien to the mainstream audience. The audience's
relationship to the characters is transformed to one of familiarity as they
become real and complex through the unfolding representation. If this occurs,
then the process of bringing to life the full humanity of each character
potentially has the power to render a fuller and more complex image of Indians
in the eyes, or minds, of the audience that may be under the influence of the
aforementioned more reductive images. Thus, Smoke Signals and popular
culture in general remain an effective avenue for confrontation and
transformation in American culture.
The novelty of these American Indian images created in the film struck a
chord with the children--ranging from age eight to fourteen--whom I talked with
concerning Smoke Signals. I asked the children what they thought about
American Indians and had them draw a picture of an "Indian" before we
watched Smoke Signals together. Before the film, one of the children
explained, "This is weird, but, when you first said Indians, I kinda
thought of savages, in a way, because, back in the old times, they didn't live
like we did, they lived in huts and had fires and all that other stuff, like
moccasins." Another child added, "They were warlike, because they
came out of there and most of them in the past didn't have guns, so they killed
people with their bare hands. Um, they lived off the land, you know, they kind
of harvested food and didn't have processed flour and things like that."
These quotes reveal the static, historical, and primitive images common in
Indian stereotypes. The children's pictures reflected the same static quality.
While one of the children, the oldest, drew a picture of a man in contemporary
mainstream clothing, the others clothed their drawings in buckskins or colorful
long dresses and beads. When asked specifically about contemporary Indians, one
child said, "They probably look like regular people but they probably have
more, like, beliefs, kind of, because they grew up that way and their ancestors
or whatever, they had more of a background."
After this discussion we watched Smoke Signals together and I
asked them a series of questions about the film and how its images were similar
to or different from their previous understandings of Indians. While they were
too inexperienced and uninformed to grasp much of the complexity of the film,
they were surprised by its portrayal of Indians. Their historical, static, and
stereotyped images of American Indians were confounded by the images portrayed
by Alexie. The children's comments reflect the humanizing depictions presented
by Alexie in the film. One of the children remarked, "I sort of think of
Native Americans as like tepees and stuff like that, but I don't think of them
as modern-day people. I think of them as, like INDIANS, but I think of them now
as regular people." Another child added, "They showed Indians like
how they know feelings; in other movies they just talk about the history of it,
and how, they didn't show how they had feelings." Along with the
humanizing aspects, the children were dismayed at the amount of drunkenness depicted
in the film and thought it portrayed Indians in a bad light. One child
remarked, "They didn't really show that much sober Indians except those
two guys, because the mom was drunk, the dad, and all those people were all
drunk."
While Smoke Signals was probably not widely watched by children,
these examples demonstrate the immediate and powerful transformative effects of
the images in the film. It can provide a direct challenge to the static
historical images through developing a complex human portrayal of contemporary
Indians. However, the salient perception among the youth that the film acts
negatively by depicting drunkenness indicates the tenuous nature of popular
culture to transform hegemonic images. This perception was not limited to the
young children I talked with. The impressions remembered from Smoke Signals
by college students in my sociology classes sustain this tenuous impact. When
asked to list the films they most remember seeing depicting American Indians,
less than 20 percent mentioned Smoke Signals. The fact that nearly every
student remembered seeing Dances with Wolves and The Last of the
Mohicans indicates that those films were more popularly seen. Of those that
mentioned Smoke Signals, only a few commented on the positive portrayal of
Indians. The bulk of the students who remembered the film remembered that it
depicted contemporary Indians, but they also characterized the film as
portraying Indians in a negative light--with a focus on drunkenness. In class
discussion, the students were asked if popular films, including Smoke
Signals, reflect common stereotypes. The majority of students said that the
films did in fact reinforce them. Only a few indicated that Smoke Signals
challenged these stereotypes or the images of Indians presented in other
popular films.
Given the children's and students' negative associations with the film
despite the well-developed alternative images created by Alexie, what are we to
make of the impact of Smoke Signals? Why did this audience identify
drunkenness as the dominant portrayal of Indians in Smoke Signals when
the film included such a powerful anti-alcohol message? Neither of the two main
characters ever touched a drop of alcohol, Victor's mother had not taken a
drink since the day her husband left, and even
The images of American Indians presented via popular culture through Smoke
Signals have the potential to have a powerful impact on the American public
perception of American Indians through challenging and reshaping hegemonic
representations. However, as I have discussed, popular culture is fleeting, Smoke
Signals is a minute portion of that popular culture, and the hegemonic
culture at large is not conducive to reinforcing Alexie's portrayals of
contemporary American Indians. Many people, both Indian and non-Indian, enjoyed
the movie for a variety of reasons. But it is not enough to simply enjoy this
movie--for whatever reason. Whether the movie evokes emotive responses
concerning personal struggles, a cathartic white liberal guilt, or a
sentimentalist or genuine compassion and/or admiration for contemporary
American Indians among a white audience, there is a larger issue at stake. The
stake is representation, and it is an issue of sovereignty. Those of us who
enjoyed the movie, talk about the movie, and recognize part of ourselves in the
movie have a responsibility to move outside our indulgence in popular culture
as entertainment and recognize the importance of popular culture to challenge
hegemony--the "subversive" component to popular culture. If the
emotional evocations lead to concrete actions and sustained attempts to promote
understanding, whether it be at home with children or in a larger social and
political sphere, then that is a first step. However, those of us operating in
the daily construction and maintenance of American culture also need to be
consciously inspired and motivated by the artistic message and pursue the
subversive project after the emotion wears off. If we fail, if we only indulge
ourselves in popular culture emanating from the